Ten of Cincinnati's best outdoor public fountains

If you tell someone Cincinnati’s identity
is connected to water, they’ll probably assume you’re talking about the
Ohio River. Yes, there is that. But it’s also about the role of outdoor
public fountains in the city’s history and recent resurgence.

The bronze Tyler Davidson Fountain
(Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown) — also known as the
Genius of Water — has been the centerpiece of Downtown since gifted by
Henry Probasco in 1871, even as the buildings around its Fountain Square
home radically changed. Recent renovations have tended to diminish the
role of the fountain itself as the sole reason for the Square to exist,
but whenever the wind is right and its spray soars out into the plaza
and onto visitors, it reasserts itself as the king — or queen — of its
domain.

Photo: Deanna Rowe

Moving just a few blocks north,
Over-the-Rhine’s turnaround has been symbolized by the crowds packing Washington Park (1230 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine) since its $46 million
redesign in 2012. If there is a key exciting component to this “new”
park, it is the 7,000-square-foot interactive water feature with its 130
pop-up jets designed by BHDP/Human Nature.

Photo: Jesse Fox

Because of its central location in the
park, it is far more than a recreational “sprayground” for children. It
is a refreshing tourist attraction for adults, a 21st century Genius of
Water.

So with these two in mind, CityBeat
compiled a list of Greater Cincinnati’s “Top 10” most appealing
fountains. There are far more fountains than can be included in any
single compact list, of course. The following is the rest of the 10 best
— the remaining eight — in no special order.

°°°

After Tyler Davidson, the fountain in
front of Union Terminal/Cincinnati Museum Center (1301 Western Ave.,
Queensgate) probably is the city’s most-photographed. With its clamshell
sprays and its boldly curved sections that cascade from the top section
to a lower pool, it nicely complements the beautifully stylized Art
Deco building itself. Overall, the elaborately shaped fountain looks
dreamed up by choreographer Busby Berkeley — only a million-dollar
mermaid is missing. The evening illumination is so soft, much of it
coming from pedestal lights, that it strikes the water like shimmering
moonlight.

Photo: Jesse Fox

The fountain was built to replace the
large pond destroyed by Union Terminal construction in 1933. So it is
large, holding 3,200 gallons of water. According to the Cincinnati
Museum Center, kids at one time played in the fountain’s lower pool.

If you want a fountain whose shape and
subject matter directly relate to its location, there’s no better
example than the Amelia Valerio Weinberg Memorial Fountain (800 Vine
St., Downtown) on the Main Library’s Vine Street Plaza. It’s also known
as the “book fountain” because sculptor Michael Frasca, a founder of
Spring Street Pottery, made an enticing series of oversized ceramic-tile
books to accompany the gentle waters.

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It works as symbolism — the “free
flow” of information and the “thirst for knowledge” — but it primarily
works as an appealing sight in its own right. The piece, a result of
Weinberg’s bequest, dates to 1990.

Not far from Fountain Square is the
Federal Reserve Bank Plaza (Fifth and Main streets, Downtown), tucked
into a quiet space just across from busy Government Square. Open 8
a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday from May through October, its main
attraction is the water sculpture by the late California artist Oliver
Andrews, which dates to 1972. Emerging out from a rectangular reflecting
pool are two abstract stainless steel pieces, one tall and vertical and
one flattened and narrow like a stylized submarine tail. One can admire
its formalist, unadorned quest for the cleansing purity of Minimalism —
a great concern on artists of that era that still resonates today.

Smale Riverfront Park’s (The Banks, West
Mehring Way, Downtown) water features are designed to dazzle, especially
at night. Like the “new” Washington Park, Smale debuted in 2012. The
water elements were designed by Sasaki Associates (of Watertown, Mass.,
appropriately) to create a flow of movement from the elevated city
toward the Ohio River below. Thus, they serve as pedestrian bridges —
albeit wet ones.

At the end of Walnut Street is the Grand
Stairway, flanked by adjoining fountains and pools that are bathed in
colored lights. At the bottom of the stairway, on its west side, the
small pools branch out. It’s meant to conjure grandeur, like walking a
red carpet to a glitzy Hollywood premiere.

Across Mehring Way and one block east of
Walnut, opposite steps leading to Main Street, is the Fath Family
Fountain. You can walk a narrow aisle between illuminated jets of
shooting water (and get wet doing it), or sit on a bench to the side and
just watch the play of the spray.

Photo: Kaila Busken

It’s with mixed feelings that I choose
the Otto Armleder Memorial Aquatic Fountain at Yeatman’s Cove Park (601
E. Mehring Way, Downtown). In its first incarnation as the Concourse
Fountain that opened in 1976, it was a masterpiece of interactive urban
landscape architecture. Designed by Philadelphia architect Louis Sauer,
who also did the more Brutalist One Lytle Place apartment tower above,
it consisted of a shallow pool into which — on one side — water would
shoot from an adjoining, right-angled tower (some called it a giant
“shower head”).

On the other side, steps rose up from the
water’s edge and were interspersed with what appeared to be mysterious
concrete monoliths when you faced them (actually they were multi-sided).
Water oozed and poured downward from them, and you could walk or sit in
this area and get as drenched as you wanted. It was an inspiration for
what cities could do to make the built environment playful.

But this free water attraction needed a
lifeguard, and for economic reasons the Cincinnati Recreation Commission
in 2009 filled in the pool and created a sprayground that doesn’t
require supervision. The steps that provided access to the “monoliths”
were fenced-off. The steep seating area behind the “shower head” is
still open, but a plaza exit at the top is now padlocked, as are several
other areas.

Aesthetically, the effect of this change
is ugly — instead of the powder blue of the pool, you see the
reddish-brown of the sprayground’s surface. But it is cooling to walk
amid its jets, and Sauer’s still-operating silently hulking “monoliths”
still have a wondrous quality. The “shower head” is still a thrill when
its nozzles send spray at you. Cincinnati Parks Department has taken
over this space as well as nearby Sawyer Point Park, so perhaps someday
it can return Concourse Fountain to its original state.

Maybe the loveliest swath of small,
landscaped public green space in Cincinnati is the six-acre Campus Green
(Martin Luther King and Campus Green drives, Clifton Heights) on the
northeast edge of University of Cincinnati’s main campus. Developed in
2000 by Hargreaves Associates as part of UC’s Master Plan, it combines
mound-like hillocks and a young arboretum with walkways and benches. It
now offers a fine view of the recent redesign of Morgens Residence Hall,
which was transformed by being encased in a new glass “envelope.”

An important component to this
environment is the modest but soothing “water stairs,” its curved
contours suggesting the space for it was created by several scoops of a
large garden shovel. That makes it appear planted and organic. Best of
all, the area sits where once there was a parking lot. How’s that for a
true Green revolution? The fountain operates 7 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays and
during special weekend events.

I’ve driven by tiny Annwood Park (1900
Madison Road, East Walnut Hills) countless times without having any idea
of the secret grotto in it. Then Steven Schuckman of the Parks
Department sent me a list of water features and the name Hardin Grotto
caught my eye. Where was it? On a subsequent visit, I found the
tucked-away grotto with its waterfall and pool just off the side street,
Annwood Street. You wouldn’t know it’s there unless you already know
it’s there. With greenery on both sides, it’s like a scale-model version
of something you might find hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains. It makes
for a nice respite in a surprisingly rustic locale.

While I haven’t prioritized the fountains
on this list, I have saved my favorite for last. It’s the Cincinnati
Art Museum’s Reflecting Pool in the Alice Bimel Courtyard (953 Eden Park
Drive, Mount Adams). The pool is marble and just a couple inches deep.
Its long, narrow rectangular form has just enough of a gap between the
smooth edge and the pavement to allow the water to overflow, like a
liquid curtain, into a drainage area below.

Along one side, granite benches holding
potted flowers alternate with ivy-filled basins. Water continuously,
mesmerizingly spurts out of demurely placed spouts inside the latter and
into the pool. There are some tree-shaded tables and small
geometric-shaped benches for sitting nearby, and the museum’s café
offers outdoor table service with a view.

Hargreaves Associates in association with
KZF designed this as part of a 2004 renovation of the museum’s interior
courtyard, and it has a very ordered, Zen Garden-like feel. This is
something worthy of Isamu Noguchi, or maybe Donald Judd if he tolerated a
little decoration. When I visited, some young ladies remarked that they
wanted badly to slip off shoes and walk in the placid water. It seems
to me you could walk on it.